Melanie Plangger studied Political Science and continued with the Master program European Politics and Society at the University of Innsbruck. During her studies, she attended traineeships at the Austrian Embassy in Budapest, the country office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Bratislava and the European Parliament in Brussels. In 2014, she graduated with a master’s thesis on the role of member state’s interests in the EU enlargement policy towards the Western Balkan countries.
In 2018, she obtained her doctoral degree at the University of Innsbruck. Her doctoral thesis “Moving mountains to Brussels: How regions act within, shape and benefit from the EU macro-regional strategy for the Alpine Region (EUSALP)” traces the development of the macro-regional strategy, a cooperation framework for 48 regions and seven states, over a period of seven years. On the basis of interviews, a document analysis and observational participation in conferences and meetings, the dissertation explores how German and Austrian Bundesländer, Swiss cantons, French régions and Italian province and regioni use an instrument of EU regional policy to respond to felt pressures of centralization, to connect across boundaries and to strengthen their position. During her doctoral studies, Plangger was a visiting research fellow at the University of Grenoble, the University of Trento and the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Brussels.
Currently, Plangger is working on the practical implementation of the EUSALP in the External Relations Department of the Office of the Tyrolean Government.
Publications
Plangger, Melanie (forthcoming). „Alpen-Demokratie“? Die Herausforderung demokratischer Legitimität in der makroregionalen Strategie für den Alpenraum. In: Alber, E. and Zwilling, C. (eds.), Governance auf dem Prüfstand: Direkte und deliberative Demokratie in Europa. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Plangger, Melanie (forthcoming). Die Europaregion und andere regionale Kooperationsformen wie Arge Alp und EUSALP. In: Conference Proceedings, Conference "Verwaltungskooperation in der Europaregion: Potenziale ohne Grenzen?", 19/20 April 2018, Bolzano. Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Plangger, Melanie (2019). Mehrebenenpolitik zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel – Die Koordination der österreichischen Europapolitik im Hinblick auf die Alpenraum-Strategie. In: Eppler, Annegret and Maurer, Andreas (eds.), Europapolitische Koordination in Österreich. Inter- und intrainstitutionelle Regelwerke, Funktionen und Dynamiken. Innsbruck/Baden-Baden: Innsbruck University Press/Nomos.
Plangger, Melanie (2018). Ein Europa der (Makro-)Regionen? Die EU-Alpenraumstrategie und die Emanzipation der Alpenregionen. In: Karlhofer, Ferdinand and Pallaver, Günther (eds.), Politik in Tirol. Jahrbuch 2018. Innsbruck/Wien/Bozen: StudienVerlag.
Plangger, Melanie (2018). De-and re-bordering the Alpine Space: how Cross-border Cooperation Intertwines Spatial and Institutional Patterns of Exclusion and Inclusion, Subordination and Horizontality. Journal of Borderlands Studies, published online: 12 July 2018. (Link)
Plangger, Melanie (2018). Territoriale Vielfalt in europäischer Einheit: Möglichkeiten für Regionen in der EU-Alpenraumstrategie. In: Alber, Elisabeth, Engl, Alice and Pallaver, Günther (eds.), Politika 18. Das Südtiroler Jahrbuch für Politik. Bolzano: Edition Raetia, 281-301.
Plangger, Melanie (2018). Building something beautiful with stones: How regions adapt to, shape and transform the EU opportunity structure. Regional & Federal Studies 28(1), 1-24. (Link)
⭐ Best Student Paper Award 2018
Plangger, Melanie (2017). Exploring the role of territorial actors in cross-border regions. Territory, Politics, Governance. Published online: 13 June 2017. (Link)
Plangger, Melanie (2016). A ‘macro-regional’ Europe in the making. Theoretical approaches and empirical evidence. Book Review. Regional Studies, 50(12), 2084-2085.
Plangger, Melanie (2015). Die Rolle nationalstaatlicher Interessen im europäischen Integrationsprozess der Westbalkan-Gruppe [The role of nation-state interests in the European integration process of the Western Balkans]. ICER Papers on European Governance Vol. I, No. 3/2015
